Generally, wireless networks are evolving towards implementations of Software Defined Radio (SDR), in order to minimize network costs as well as make base-station upgrade cycles shorter. As things stand, base-station components (e.g., MAC, PHY) represent real-time workloads with periodic strict time deadlines. For example, WiMAX processing (MAC+PHY) has a frame-deadline once every few milliseconds (e.g., 2 to 5 ms). The processing latency of each module could be as small as a few hundred microseconds or up to a few milliseconds, depending on load.
During network deployment, the characterization of base-station resource requirements at different workloads is useful in provisioning base-station network hardware in SDR-based networks. Further, when base-stations processors are co-hosted on a private cloud, profiling is useful for hot-spot detection and performance problem diagnosis. Typically, base-station processing deadlines are at a per-frame level, which implies that resource allocation should be worked in with per-frame deadlines. Thus, profiling at a granularity of per-frame processing (e.g., on the order of microseconds) can prove useful and advantageous.
Conventionally, profiling tools have not been found to be reliable at the above-noted smaller granularities. Some tools use hardware counters, are architecture dependent, and are usable only on selected platforms. Since SDR base-stations can be deployed on a variety of hardware platforms, such tools are thus far from being readily usable on a consistent basis. Additionally, such tools often require a recompilation that can add unneeded and undesirable degrees of extra setup time and complexity.